A practical use for ATML Capabilities

Automatic Test Markup language (ATML) Capabilities provides one of the pivotal behavioral descriptions available within ATML, but to date there has not been any significant use of these underlining mechanisms. This paper considers what is required to automate the selection of instrumentation through the use of capability descriptions. Overall, ATML Capabilities provides a modular and structured way to describe both instruments and test station capabilities using components such as IEEE Std. 1641™ Signal and Test Definition[4] (1641) signals, ATML resources and switch elements. These describe the performance of an entity that can be considered either at an individual level or combined together as a complete system, providing a set of modeling elements that can be used to build and describe performance characteristics of real instruments and their impact within an Automatic Test System (ATS). Formal descriptions of resource capabilities allow complex tools and techniques to be developed to help automate the process of matching test requirements onto resource level specifications, grouped within a physical instrument. This paper examines various methods that should be used in the analysis of requirements against specification, including symbolic decomposition of the capability models and simulation comparison of signal levels and characteristics. It also considers where these different approaches could be best applied to help provide a solution for matching test requirements to resource capabilities beyond a simple one-to-one named signal comparison. Encouraging different instrument manufactures to provide capability descriptions is in reality, a user or market led activity. Therefore, what is critical is having tools and applications that use capability descriptions which would be the key to creating a user demand. An example of such an application could be leveraging capability descriptions to automate the selection of instruments from test requirements.